Broken Bird, Fly Now
by always9160
Summary: With the end of the Second Wizarding War, Severus Snape, having had a meaning of life beforehand, is left broken. After a period of six years, he is still vainly trying to come to terms with losing the person who was more important to him than anything else - unaware of the confrontation that is drawing nearer... Pairing SS/OC


**Broken Bird, Fly Now**

Disclaimer: First of all, I do **not** own Harry Potter, of course. The magical word with its characters belongs to J.K. Rowling alone. One character, however, is mine, as you'll find out if you continue reading.

And if you do so, please let me know what you're thinking of the story. It's only a one-shot, a short story using the pairing and motive (infinity) my bigger, much more complex story is about, just so you get an impression of what my style and the contents are like. Therefore, the background of my character and also the development of their relationship will not be revealed in _'Broken Bird, Fly Now'.  
_ It would be encouraging for me to know that the story does what it is supposed to (even with the little information you've got), though I originally started writing ' _Chasing Infinity_ ', my big unfinished project, just for myself.

English isn't my mother-tongue, so if anyone notices a mistake, I would be grateful to be told so. Have fun! :)

* * *

 **With no lovin' in our souls**  
 **And no money in our coats**  
 **You can't say we're satisfied**  
 **(Angie, Angie)**  
 **You can't say we never tried**

 **All the dreams we held so close**  
 **Seemed to all go up in smoke**  
 **Let me whisper in your ear**  
 **(Angie, Angie)**  
 **Where will it lead us from here**  
(from: Angie, Rolling Stones)

* * *

 _A high-pitched scream filled the calm of the night. It was a moon- and starless night, cold and dark. Severus Snape shivered even in his thick winter cloak and flinched violently as a second scream reached him. He knew that voice, though twisted with pain and despair and nearly unrecognizable. Oh, he'd always recognize that voice._

 _Fear crept into his insides and he started to run, run to her side. He needed to save her. This time. This time had to be different, he had to succeed under all circumstances…  
His breath was coming in quick succession and his lungs and legs started to burn, but still, STILL, he didn't get anywhere, he didn't even seem to move. No. His boots got stuck in the sludgy ground again and again and despair slowly got an iron grip on him. He would lose her. Their work was efficient, everyone knew that.  
And as it occurred to him that he hadn't heard another scream for minutes, he knew he would be too late. _

_Suddenly, as if the silent admission to himself had changed the scene, she was there, right before him, lying in the mud of the grounds. Her eyes were full of unshed tears as she looked right at him, through him. He hadn't noticed the blood at first, but the smell was too strong at the small distance to not acknowledge it. Blood was running down her face, from her nose, her mouth and cut throat. Severus froze, his hand extended towards her, but he didn't dare reach out any further. They had played their games – and won. And he, he had failed her again. He'd always fail her._

 _'Se… Se-ve-rus…,' her voice whimpered, but as he looked up with a stabbing glint of hope, her eyes were glassy and empty. A laugh he knew only too well sounded from a distance, cold and high. The Dark Lord was apparently satisfied._

 _The pain took Severus' heart with full force and a howl escaped his throat. He collapsed, as if the strings holding his body upright had been cut, the wings keeping him up in the air all of a sudden clipped and broken. Why fly high if there was nothing to fly for, after all?_

* * *

Panting and gasping, Severus Snape opened his eyes wide and nearly jumped from his bed. It had happened again.

Frustrated, he stood and strode into his bathroom to splash cold water onto his face. 'She always said she loved my hair damp like this', he thought while staring into the reflection of the mirror and promptly closed his eyes to banish the tears from them. Six years had passed and he was still hurting the same. Breathing hard, he reconstructed the layers of his Occlumency walls and left the room with determined, fast steps.

Closing his eyes to the pain and running away was the only option left for him if he wanted to survive. Without her.

* * *

Raindrops tickled the skin on her face and soaked her dark hair and clothes. She quickly entered the airplane to escape the storm that was drawing nearer and nearer. 'Out of one storm to crash into the next with full force', she thought with gritted teeth and dropped into her seat, pulling her cloak tighter around her slim form.  
The storm awaiting her was great and most likely to tear her apart. She shivered. There were only few pieces of her left, but they could still be ripped if one knew how to. And he knew her bloody better than she knew herself.

Closing her dark blue eyes in pain, she leaned her head against the small window and breathed profoundly. Maybe it would do her some good to see things with a little optimism, though she'd never been good at that one. Her brow furrowed as she tried her best, but optimism seemed much, much further away than Europe. Unreachable.

Europe. Britain. Scotland. Hogwarts. Severus Snape.

Her heart clenched as her mind betrayed her at once and filled her inner eye with memories and pictures she'd thought lost forever. She couldn't keep the tears from jumping from her eyes then, but forced herself to retain the dignity of crying silently. Nobody should know about that weakness. The particular weakness Severus Snape. It would be used against her, just as all her other weaknesses.

Staring out of the window, she watched as the plane took off and her mind with it. The images hurt and at the very same time, they filled her with something… warm and tender. Hope, she realised. She was hoping again. Stupid thing. Shaking her head in a violent motion, she suppressed the memories, locked them behind her Occlumency walls, where they wouldn't be found by anyone. And most importantly not by herself.

Dwelling on them wouldn't help them, neither her nor him.

Because it would never be the same, anyway.

* * *

Shivering, she crossed the entry hall with fast steps and turned towards the staircases to the dungeons. Although the castle still recognised her with the warmth she had once been used to, it seemed to be getting colder and colder with every step she took.  
But it had to be done. She owed him that much. In her concentration to keep the memories that were getting more and more aggressive out of her mind, she was surprised at how short the way had been when she reached the door to his office. If she hesitated now, she wouldn't ever do it again. She would get the better of it. Now.

A few seconds after she had knocked, he responded with an empty, exhausted 'Enter'.

This would be hard.

After she had closed the door behind herself, the broken voice spoke again: 'And whom do I have the pleasure with?'  
His irony hurt, for he didn't even care to look up. But what hurt much more was his appearance. His black hair had grown greasy again and he seemed to have lost much weight (not unlike herself), for his robes clung rather loosely to his figure and his cheeks were haggard. In addition, all his movements seemed hollow and forced, as if he were a string puppet being moved against its will.

'You are not serious, are you?' she deadpanned.

He looked at her then, still not recognising her or not willing to recognise what he saw, though she thought she saw his jaw clench and his previously empty eyes widen with disbelief.

She sighed. 'Samantha Grace, stupid. Does this somehow help your brain cells with processing this… unsolvable problem?'  
This had probably been a bit hard, as he couldn't have expected her. So she quickly backpaddled by saying: 'Severus… It's me, don't say you don't recognise me, the woman you…'

That was it. The point where his frozenness broke and left a man on fire.

'The woman I what? Go on, now, tell me what you think you were to me! Tell me how you thought it… not worth mentioning that you would leave and probably never return! You thought you left a whole man behind, don't you?'  
He stared at her through burning, unyielding eyes. Sam slightly shook her head, her heart aching, but he didn't seem to notice. He was completely absorbed in dealing with the situation, coming to terms with the fact that the woman he had thought lost was standing before him.

'Do you want to know what you left? A shell of a man. A man who had seemingly received the Dementor's Kiss, left without a heart to feel, without a soul and without the wish to continue living. I did, though, to help bringing his goddamned war to an end. But I didn't live, not like any person would define living. I survived. I functioned. I worked out their plans, executed them and did what I could. Without feeling. Without once forgetting that I had lost everything and could never possibly regain it.'

There was a small pause, so quiet that their breathing was audible. Then, his black eyes suddenly grew unfocused and he yelled: 'You destroyed me, woman! I had never thought you capable of that, otherwise I wouldn't have given you what you took anyway, but you left. You were gone for six years and I… You don't know what it was like. And now… you're standing here, without explanation and want me to… what?'

Sam watched as he tumbled and had to lean on the desk so as not to fall to his knees.  
'I can't do this, Sam. I'm broken and you bloody know that. What do you want?'

'I… I don't want anything. I wanted to see you as soon as I could and I swear, I'd have informed you if I had had the possibility. But I didn't, so I came in the hope of – I don't know, probably naively hoping it would be like before.' She stopped talking as something in Severus' eyes changed. Like a cloud passing the sky, hurt started to spread inside his dark irises and Sam had to keep herself from breaking down completely. It was so much harder than she could have had imagined…

In a rough voice, she tried again: 'Look, it's not as if everything is lost. I know you suffered inhumanely and unspeakably and you should know that it wasn't much better for me, for I didn't know if you'd survived or not. But that doesn't matter now. We have to start all over again, but we have all the possibilities.' He avoided her gaze, his shoulders sagged and his face turned from her. 'Hey', she whispered and took a step towards him to gently touch his forearm. Bad idea.  
Severus snatched her wrists in a steely grip and looked into her eyes, forbiddingly and at the same time desperately, before pushing her into the wall at her back. Groaning, she slid to the floor and rubbed her hurting backside. However, she had to keep in mind that his wounds were much, much more serious than the few bruises gained from that. Standing – weakly but still on both feet – she raised her chin defiantly.

'Don't you dare do that to yourself, Severus Snape.'

He had seemingly overheard the 'to yourself', judging from the way he got completely heated up again and hurled another avalanche of yelled words at her.

'Ah, so you decide to come back after spending years apart from me while I thought you dead, waltz in and expect me to fall to my knees, thanking you and begging you to stay? Do you seriously think that I missed…?' He was starting to yell again, but Sam interrupted him by stabbing her finger into his chest. He seemed somewhat irritated at her rapid movement towards him, but the mere contact of their bodies made him shiver.

Severus stared at her with widened eyes and a pain so profound it made her eyes fill with tears. She said softly and soothingly, trying not to feel hurt at the rejection: 'Don't start lying to yourself and to me. Let me explain it to you. We both had a rough time, but now… it's over. I know it's hard to accept, but I'm back, Severus. I'm here with you and I won't leave again.'

He closed his eyes as he heard his name spoken in her voice, a voice full of intensity and life, and took a deep breath. Shivers were still running down his spine with her hand laying upon his rapidly rising and falling chest. 'Sam… I thought you were gone… It doesn't make any sense… Why…?'

She interrupted his cracked, raw voice and whispered: 'Shh… I know. No longer, love. Just feel the moment. You can question whatever you want later. But please not now, we have waited six years for this. We have both spent six years without love or light or hope. The change is drastic, but it's everything we could have hoped for. You'll see, we'll rise like phoenixes from the ashes from now on. Believe me.'

The words seemed to turn a lever inside him, for suddenly, his eyes opened and he clutched her to his chest tightly. 'How very dramatic of you, Sam,' he said dryly and his opponent sighed with relief. If his humour was back, he was recovering.

Severus intently looked into her eyes for quite some time and finding the naked truth there that she was his again, he crashed his lips against hers in a desperate way, without the slightest gentleness or tenderness. She returned his kiss without hesitation, but pulled back soon after. 'Severus…'

'No, don't do this to me,' he growled longingly and pushed her against the wall. His hands trembled and Sam felt that his inside was shattered, still hurting but also hoping beyond sense and finally regaining some crutch. His broken wings were starting to flatter faintly and tentatively, though still broken, and it hurt. It hurt because they couldn't heal from one moment to the next. It was a very complex fracture and Sam understood that perfectly. She was a healer, after all, even though his injuries were hidden to the rest of the world.

'You know I actually deserve better than that,' she said when he wouldn't stop pressing her against the wall and was nearly swallowing her with his bruising kisses. 'Really?' he teased her with a cocked brow. Sam sighed and took his hand from her cheek.  
'Oh come on, let's get a bit more comfortable.'

'If you force me to be the gentleman – may I lead you to my private chambers?' he asked sweetly and bowed excessively. Sam smiled, took his hand and nodded.

* * *

When they were comfortably seated on his bed, both clutching a cup of hot tea, Severus suddenly seemed to start seeing the possibilities that Sam had been talking about earlier. He opened up to her and she couldn't have been more grateful.

'My heart broke the moment I learned of your disappearance and inevitable death. It took me long to even find the scattered pieces and put them together. It was only a pile of rubble up to now, but I think... Some moments ago, something changed there… Like I suddenly have a heart that is able to feel again…'

Smiling softly, she leaned against his chest and teased him: 'Well, well, now you're being dramatic, Severus.'

'I'm fine with that… As long as you're here, I'm fine with every embarrassment in the world.'

He was kissing her again, the longing and despair of a painful period of six years blending through, and he knew that only Sam, the woman who could meet him in wit, power and passion, would understand and respond. She did. My God, he'd missed her more than he'd even dared to think.

* * *

In the end, it was just a small moment. It was the moment Severus Snape's heart was healed or at least started doing so and Samantha Grace's one came back to living and beating, though healing was still out of reach for her, by far. It was the moment of souls finding one another (again), knowing that this time was different.

This time, there wouldn't have to be a goodbye, for there's no forever without goodbye.

This time, the darkness around and inside them was fought and conquered.

This time, there was nothing to be afraid of.

Yes, it was only a moment leading to many, many other moments, but at the same time, it was infinity. Because only then, with the two of them having been leading a life of pure horror for six years (after having had everything they'd dreamed of beforehand), they were able to meet infinity.

Only then, infinity was truly willing to spread its wings over the two broken birds still too weak to fly and cover them. And it did.

* * *

Review please 3


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